The Victim (7 page)

He strutted all day long in the Liberty Square yards that separated the houses, whose barrack-like facades were pockmarked with gunfire. He kept his rocks tucked up into the cuffs of his size 44 FUBU jeans. His cash he carried in his pocket, a thick wad of tens and twenties the size of a softball.

Business was steady and with his connections in the neighborhood, rival dealers kept to their own blocks. From MLK north to 67th, from 12th west to 15th, that was all his. But other dealers, who were missing out on about twenty square blocks of crack addicts, took offense to this cocky kid who thought he ran the whole show.

About twelve blocks east of Liberty Square lay Little Haiti. Zoe Pound territory. Those mad Haitians were the children of the refugees who came to Miami in droves during the late eighties and early nineties. Those who’d rather cast their fate upon the ocean tides than risk meeting the business end of a machete at the hands of Baby Doc’s regime.

The dividing line between Liberty City and Little Haiti wasn’t necessarily etched in stone. It was just sort of obvious. The billboards’ language changed from English to Creole. Oxtail being sold out the back of busted vans. Whatever the boundary, it was respected.

That is, until the rumors spread eastward about the thousand bucks a day Quincy was making.

One humid summer afternoon when he was seventeen, a couple of Zoe Pound boys rolled up, five-deep in a tricked-out Impala sitting on twenty-two inch Daytons. They parked at the corner of MLK and 12th and got out, AK-47s in hand.

Seeing five guys storming through Liberty Square carrying choppers in broad daylight wasn’t the most unusual sight. The residents just took the necessary—and well-rehearsed—precautions. They rounded up the kids, got everyone inside. Some lay down in their bathtubs. Nobody called the cops.

If Quincy had known that a small army was after him, he probably would have run. But he had his earbuds in, strutting his stuff down the concrete walkways, two-dozen crack rocks tucked up in his jeans, bobbing his head in sync with the beat of the music.

The unmistakable staccato of AK fire caught him off guard for a minute. Growing up in that neighborhood had given him some finely tuned hearing. Through the blaring music he could make it out. He shut off the iPod and listened again. Three, four rounds in quick, fully automatic succession.

He dive-rolled for the grass. A handful of crack rocks spilled out of his sharply folded cuffs. He belly-crawled across the lawn, underneath the clothesline, to a planter box behind his cousin’s apartment. He lifted it up and retrieved the TEC-22 he’d stashed there for emergencies. It was technically a handgun save for the banana clip that held thirty .22 long rifle rounds.

He took cover behind a wall, waited, and returned fire.

Why Miesha Donaldson didn’t run for cover would baffle investigators in the months to come. Her mother would claim that she couldn’t hear the gunfire and that the girl was outside playing. Either way, no amount of blame shifting could exculpate the guilty parties. At the end of the shootout Quincy and the five members of Zoe Pound had sprayed Liberty Square with over two hundred rounds of ammunition and all managed to walk away without a scratch. The only casualty was that seven-year-old girl, lost in a land of make believe, playing with her dolls on her auntie’s front steps, blissfully unaware of her surroundings.

The bullet that struck her in the head and killed her instantly was fired by an AK-47, intended for Quincy. Since Quincy was an equal participant in the shootout he was charged with aggravated manslaughter. He didn’t fire the shot that killed her but his actions, by law, were reckless enough to warrant culpability. The five Zoe Pound members were caught a few blocks away, fleeing the scene in the Impala, tossing their assault rifles out onto 54th Street.

In the days to follow, candlelight vigils were held. Local preachers went on fire-and-brimstone tirades about the scourge of crime in their neighborhoods. Fingers were pointed in all directions, most of them at the state and local governments for failing to provide jobs and after-school programs that would somehow stop the kids from killing one another.

Quincy spent twenty-one days in juvenile detention before the State Attorney’s Office sent him to Circuit Court. Miesha’s family packed the tiny courtroom as the assistant state attorney read the direct file petition. Quincy stood shackled beside his public defender, head down, anxiously swaying. Miesha’s family members all wore
In Loving Memory
T-shirts with her second-grade yearbook photo silkscreened on the front. Before the ASA could finish reading the petition, Miesha’s grandmother screamed for Jesus and passed out on the courtroom floor. Fire Rescue had to be called.

The Miami Police Department had collected the statements of seventeen eyewitnesses. But as the months passed, a funny thing happened. The number of witnesses began to dwindle. Stories changed. People who could have sworn they could identify the shooters all of a sudden had second thoughts. Some moved out of state and didn’t provide their forwarding addresses to the witness counselors who were desperately trying to keep the prosecution’s case alive. Other witnesses changed their numbers. The rest just stopped returning calls and wouldn’t answer the door when the process servers showed up with subpoenas.

The state tried to exercise every legal remedy available to them but nothing short of the hand of God could bring those witnesses in to testify. There were allegations of witness tampering and intimidation. But most of all, it was chalked up to the unwritten code of silence in the neighborhood. No snitching.

Eleven months after Quincy was arrested, he and his co-defendants were released from jail and all of their charges were dismissed. Everybody ran to the press to cover their asses. The mayor blamed the police department. The police chief blamed the state attorney. The state attorney blamed the witnesses who refused to testify. In the end, Quincy returned to Liberty Square with renewed confidence and the Miami City Commission passed a resolution to rename a section of Northwest 63rd Street “Miesha Donaldson Way.”

From that moment on, every officer in the Miami Police Department who patrolled Liberty City could spot Quincy a mile away. They considered his dismissal an affront to justice and would’ve loved the opportunity to nail him with something that would stick. The State Attorney’s Office, still licking its wounds over their failure to put a prosecution together, would’ve asked the judge for a life sentence had he gotten so much as a loitering ticket.

They considered Quincy a murderer without consequence. Right up there with Casey Anthony and George Zimmerman. Another Floridian cut loose by a shitty justice system.

Quincy didn’t give a fuck. He thought he was untouchable. The business savvy and natural swagger came right back to him, earning him both trust and a loyal customer base. It also earned him the attention of a good number of Miami police officers who made it their mission to bust Quincy for something.

The traffic stop that ultimately led to a non-bondable charge of attempted first-degree murder of a law enforcement officer was sketchy. Was Quincy’s taillight really out? All anyone knew was that the car being pulled over was the unmistakable gunmetal gray Dodge Diplomat with the rusted-out bumper and gold spoke wire rims.

Quincy saw the blue and red strobes in his rearview. He kept his speed steady, heading eastbound on MLK. The interior stunk of freshly smoked weed and he knew that alone was enough probable cause for the whole car to be tossed. The gram of rock cocaine tinkling around inside a glass vial was hidden in the glove box beneath a folded road map, a dozen Jiffy Lube receipts, and his expired registration certificate. With no scales or baggies or any indicia of intent to sell, it would be simple possession. A night in jail and a drug court referral under optimal circumstances. But the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office would instantly recognize his name during the bond hearing, and the judge—an elected official, no less—would see that cameras were in the courtroom, and would have to appear tough on the guy who got away with killing a seven-year-old girl. They’d have to give him a bond—after all, possession of cocaine is only a third-degree felony—but it would be a staggering departure from the standard bond schedule. So far out of reach that none of his people could possibly come up with the ten percent premium needed to hire a bondsman. He’d sit in jail for twenty-one days until the State filed and instead of credit for time served, he’d be looking at five years state prison.

Panic gripped him. He was deep in the teeth-grinding bug-eyed frenzy of a crack high, having just smoked with his P.I.F. homeboys before giving his baby momma a ride to work. He thought about prison and he just about snapped. He floored it, blowing the red light at Northwest 17th Avenue, leading the officer on a chase amid the screaming protests and arm-slaps of his baby momma, seated in the passenger seat.

The pursuit came to an abrupt end after three blocks when Quincy tried to make a right too quickly and skidded into a curb, cracking the axle. He opened the door and jumped out of the car, sprinting for the apartment complex and hopping the wrought-iron security gate. He was quite fast, out of sight by the time the officer pulled up behind him, crouched with his gun drawn behind his open car door.

Quincy watched the scene unfold from the roof of the two-story apartment building. He squatted behind the clunky A/C unit, peering over the edge for a view of the street below. There was no backup. Just one officer. His gun was no longer drawn and Shawntelle, Quincy’s baby momma, was out of the car, arguing with him.

I ain’t seen him. I tole you, he just up and run. I ain’t seen where he gone.

It was only a matter of time before the officer ran Shawntelle’s name and date of birth. That bench warrant issued for failing to appear for her arraignment on a driving while license suspended charge was already in the system. The officer handcuffed her, threatening to take her to jail if she didn’t give up his whereabouts. Had she seen him run for that apartment complex? Had she watched him leap the fence like a pole-vaulter?

Watching the scene unfold, Quincy wondered if the officers instinctively go to the roof. Would they call in a helicopter?

He saw a broken piece of cinderblock out of the corner of his eye.

The ER surgeons said that the eleven-pound hunk of concrete that fell twenty-eight feet and landed plumb on Officer Dayan Campos’s head should have killed him. It gained such velocity in its well-aimed descent that it shattered the front of the officer’s skull. Bone plates had to be surgically removed to alleviate the swelling in his brain.

Quincy never thought that Officer Campos would live.

Quincy never thought that a security camera from a liquor store across the street had captured the entire incident on video.

Quincy never thought that his girlfriend would give a statement to police. But she did, right after finding out that he had gotten another girl pregnant.

Every defense attorney takes a case that they will later regret. It’s not a case taken for the money, although before Anton’s website was ranking on search engines, he took whatever came through the door. The allure of the high-profile nature of the case drew him in—like most twenty-eight-year-old criminal lawyers trying to build a reputation. Quincy had been just another public defender case until one of Anton’s clients passed a business card along to him during chow. Quincy had been in custody almost ten months by the time Anton came onboard. The fee was less-than-stellar. Nine thousand for a life felony where the media would be watching the case every step of the way. But not nine thousand at once. Nine thousand on a payment plan. A thousand here, a couple of hundred there. For a while he was spending his Friday afternoons driving around Miami-Dade County, collecting a few hundred bucks cash from each family member willing to contribute to Quincy’s defense. It made him feel like just another hack.

Four years later, Anton wished he could undo the past. The media coverage had earned him a couple of courtroom clips he could post on his website and a few grainy photos in the
Herald
he could frame and put on his show-off wall. All in all, the case was not winnable. What good was a high-profile case if you were just going to be known as the lawyer who lost?

Year after year, he went through the bullshit motions of delaying the case until the inevitable moment would come when the judge would say no more continuances. He took his time setting depositions. It was legal limbo. The State had Quincy; he was dead to rights guilty. Life in prison was inevitable.

Sylvia Kaplan walked into the courtroom carrying a thick Redweld file under her arm.

Anton stood up. “Hold on a minute, Quincy. Let me chat with the prosecutor.”

Sylvia stood at the prosecution table leafing through her file.

“
Good morning, Sylvia.”

She turned and faked a smile. She was twenty-two years older than Anton with twenty-nine years’ experience as a prosecutor. She wore her silvery-blonde hair pageboy style and a black Gucci skirt that was uncharacteristic for a career public servant. Having never had children, she and her husband could dedicate their disposable income to those things. It was said she could be in a six-week murder trial and never wear the same suit twice. She was one of the elected State Attorney’s chief assistants, a supervisor whom Anton once reported to as a pit prosecutor. Sylvia never let him forget that.